Hypnosis
by Airrei
Summary: Shizaya. What if they had never hated each other, but was instead forced to? A dream that turns into a nightmare, and a nightmare that is reality. That reality is a lie created by the one who can't bear to see the other's hurt eyes.


Meant to be part of a story I'm writing, but sort of just unhinged itself and became something else. Expect something like this to pop up later.

-Note- Incredibly AU. Might become confusing because reality and lies merge. Please ask me through messages if there are any questions. Pairing is Shizaya.

* * *

**Hypnosis**

* * *

Between two mirrors, a boy would stare in wonder. One mirror would reflect an object, and the other would reproduce the mirror and the object. Then the first mirror would reflect this back, while the second mirror did the same until the object had split into infinite imitations. However, the boy would touch the surface of the cold glass, and reason with himself. No matter how many times his image was reproduced, he was the only one in that room. If the lights were turned off, he would still be able to feel himself, and realize this as the only fact. Even if he wanted to escape and run into the parallel world in which he saw himself, he would only run into cold, hard glass.

Amidst this dilemma, he whispered softly to himself. "Nightmares you can wake up from. Reality you cannot."

Mouthing the exact words, crimson eyes would snap open. From the gap between the blinds, light would streak upon his face, making a striped pattern of creamy yellow and dark gray, indicating the authentic morning the sun brought along. Keeping his eyes open and staring at the indents over his ceiling was easy, but getting up was not. Yet, he did, without the difficulty he felt, as if he had always been this light in movement no matter how badly his mind contradicted it.

Breakfast was hard to swallow that day. In fact, he didn't have the faintest clue what he was eating until midway when he realized he had tasted maple syrup on sausage and ketchup on waffle. He decided to discard the waffle, but the sausage could be saved. Oh well, the box indicated they were expired anyway. It wasn't easy to cook when one lived alone and was constantly busy. Maybe because of the nostalgic dream, but as he wrapped his dark coat around himself, he couldn't help but feel a bit insecure. Dipping his face into the fur around his hood, he slinked out of the building. What if the dream was actually a nightmare, and that nightmare, a prelude to reality?

With the thought clouding his mind, concentrating on his path was hard. As if blindly lead by muscle memory, he found himself guiding through the faceless crowd and the smog hazing over the city, as if they were only one being channeling an inescapable bond. By the time he realized where his feet was taking him, he was already staring at the famous intersection of Ikebukuro, the train ticket he used, still out and in his hand. Everything was so vague, his seemingly genius observation skills rendered useless for the time being, simply staring at a giant Russian man, holding a flier to his face.

"Izaya?" He blinked his weary eyes as he heard his name called. The giant's mouth was moving, but they were uttering incomprehensible Japanese. Yet, if it was not him who had spoken it, Izaya turned his head sharply, who was it?

Their eyes met. A young man smiled back, his spectacles gleaming in the white morning sun. He was meticulous when he pulled his hands out of his white coat pockets, but Izaya could see…could smell the faint odor of drying blood, the sour chemicals. This man smelled of the hospital and of the dead, yet he would still smile and greet people as if nothing was out of the ordinary. Yes, it had become routine for him to treat patients, sometimes watching ones beyond help in their last hours. So routine that he probably couldn't smell these disturbing odors that were foreign to someone else's nostrils.

Izaya sunk deeper into his coat, his midnight hair blending with the inside of the cloth. The corners of his mouth would return the gesture of the underground doctor, but his eyes never held the same sparkle. "Well…Shinra. Hasn't it been a while to see each other…in person?"

"I guess," Shinra looked surprised. He hadn't been one to take Izaya's cryptic manner into account himself. They conversed about business over the phone often, and most of the time it was Izaya hiring his headless girlfriend, Celty into some kind of mess. Frankly, Shinra wasn't so sure if he would appreciate the job offers or despise them. Sure, the more then super human dullahan could easily take care of herself, but she was still someone precious to him. That aside, the doctor's dark eyes flitted towards Izaya's left hand. "I'm just about done with my job. They had me there since yesterday. Can you believe it- and Celty's not going to be able to ease the pain in my heart till evening! Do you want to come over for a while? I say-it's not wise for you to roam around Ikebukuro this plain in sight. I could at least boil you some internodes of the Camellia sinensis."

Izaya pocketed his left hand suggestively. Shinra winced again, and the tension returned. They both knew it had nothing to do with chatting over a cup of tea, or whatever Shinra had just said. However, as the sound of thunder against earth echoed throughout the street, the tension shifted dramatically. The brunette pushed passed the bewildered doctor, and the sea of onlookers split and panicked as if they were the waves that Moses had parted.

"Sorry Shinra, maybe next time."

Heiwajima Shizuo was not a natural disaster. Or at least not one that mother nature created from the skies. Though the veins over his face was menacing and he looked like there was a beast inside daring to tear his human form apart, he would forever claim his disgust to violence. The steel ladder smoked where it rubbed against the now dented brick of the side of the building. Shinra would shudder in fear and excitement at another close encounter of so called death. This time though, he wasn't sure which was the root of trouble. The running shadow of this sly, psychopathic acquaintance, or the incontrollable, anger ridden childhood friend.

Instead, he would reminisce back to their teenage days. The smothering images vivid in the back of his mind. His scientific curiosity brimming before actual care as to what those scars on the left hand meant. If he could remember correctly, Orihara Izaya had been left handed.

He remembered tending to the same steady hand, that had been trembling uncontrollably at the time, years ago. The first signs he saw of Izaya's changes into the more darker, cynical self. As he cradled his mutilated hand, he would refuse to cry out in pain. Something happened. Something he would not pry into, but could not help but be curious about. His patience was rewarded either way, for he had the right to know. Shinra had no say in the events unfolding around and behind him, but he remained curious to this day. Even when the hand had healed, Izaya could not use it. He would only watch as his two friends chased each other in a nightmare, and the day either woke up would be the day when something out of his usual routine would break.

Turning around, Shinra should never have guessed that day could be today.

* * *

"_Yo! Shizuo. Heeey, don't ignore me! Shizuo! Shizu-chaaaan!" Izaya would peek out from between the branches, rustling the leaves to fall on an irritated boy below. The blonde would look up to see an idiot. His dark bangs swished and flickered away from his forehead, as he hung upside down on his knees._

As he dropped down from the ledge, he flipped back up before landing. The asphalt echoed under his shoes as he entered an eerie tunnel. Heart pounded noisily into his ears as the chaser's thunderous footsteps crashed like falling cymbals.

"_IIIIIIiiiizaaaaaayyaaaaaa!!!!" Shizuo screamed when the trickster showered him with a pile of autumn leaves. Then Izaya would run, run until he was breathless, only to be caught by his easily angered friend. Tackled down and lying down on dry grass._

Bits of littered pebbles dug painfully into his palms as the hard asphalt met with his back. The brunette could faintly remember seeing red and black between his tightly shut eyes as his head slammed down after his body. He could feel something crawling at the side of his cheek and reached for it, his hand tracing lukewarm blood.

"_YIIIIK, OKAY, GET IT OFF ME. GET IT OFF ME NOW," Shizuo would laugh wholeheartedly as a beetle that had been in the trees fell on the brunette's cheek and started to craw upward. It was punishment, they both thought. However, the gentle hearted blonde would reach for it, and gently pluck it off, returning it to the wild. Then he would caress his friend's cheek, showing there was nothing to fear…_

Shizuo lifted a fist into the air before bringing it down on his rival's cheek. Izaya gasped out in pain, though before the second blow connected, he somehow managed to roll away to the other side. Getting up on unsteady legs, he stumbled and caught himself. Spitting and rubbing his face with the back of his sleeve, he glared, menacingly at the attacker.

_He stared longingly into the blonde's eyes. Blushing, caught in surprise at the gentleness. His eyes would flutter away to the side, his heart would beat to an unfamiliar rhythm. "Ne…Shizu-chan. I-… did you know…? I-"_

"This is why I hate you so much," Izaya would laugh hysterically. Swishing out his silver blade, he pointed his right arm at his enemy. Then he would notice the deep, blood red in which the blade reflected, the sky's menacing surface bleeding into a gradient of terror. Shizuo would stop midway and watch entranced, his eyes bulging wide and his breathing gradually heavier.

Red. Orange. Yellow. Red. Black. Silver. Red. His eyes traced the blade, his eyes growing wider and wider. Images…some sort of images. Parents, blood, his younger brother's sleeping face. The white walls splashed in crimson. His mother dying…father…father… It was him who… He was sweating heavily, but a deep chill froze his nerves, as if he was about to confront something he had been forgetting…forgetting for an extremely long time. Pain stabbed at his insides, but brutally beat at his head. His breathing tuned into fast beats, as if he was hyperventilating. There was complete silence between them, but a high pitched tone rang, the noise was constant and one note stretched out, the sound of a patient's heart stopping.

Shizuo dropped to his knees. He clutched his head and he shook violently, his eyes begging for something, anything, to stop this excruciating pain, before screaming. Izaya hesitated, before lowering his weapon. He watched in astonishment, and his voice was coated in unfamiliar concern as he spoke his name. "Shizu…chan?"

"You-YOU!!" To the approaching figure, the blonde lashed out fiercely. Blade dropped to the ground, and skidded away, reflecting the two writhing figures. They spun, but Shizuo pounding heavily into the other, but Izaya wasn't even trying anymore. Shizuo roared out in an enraged frenzy, his mind wandering from scene to scene. Izaya barely watched, feeling the blood cake his face, feeling like he deserved this.

He didn't regret it.

* * *

Shinra contemplated over his cup of tea. The effects some horrendous events would have in a human mind. There was trauma, and he would remember Izaya's scarred hand each time. Was it trauma? He had speculated the events in his own way, processing each scenes only from information that he received:

"It's over."

Shizuo watched in horror. His mother crouched against the wall smearing it crimson as she crumpled over her stomach. His father slowly pulled out the knife, and he turned around to the sleeping Kasuka. It was like a scene out of a horror movie. His family had never been in much arguments. Not life threatening arguments. Just last weekend they had gone out together in what would be their last event as a family. Surreal, as his mother weakly called out his name, and Kasuka's. Her voice was like a leaking faucet. It dripped and it fell, splashed then it shattered.

Family suicide. Something that's been going on in Japan for a while after the father of the family lost his job.

Then Shizuo would lose his sanity. His anger and sanity are not the same thing, since he can clearly think about how much he loathes violence each time his impulses kick in. This time, he was probably not thinking at all.

How could he? His opponent was his father.

If watching his mother die in front of him wasn't enough, his brother was about to meet the same fate soon enough. Even if he had managed to escape by himself, where would he be able to go? It was apparent his father was going to kill himself too, and what would it be like to have your family gone in that kind of matter? All in one go.

Shinra sighed. No, no, that was probably not it. How could Shizuo think about that when he was standing in that kind of situation? Then Shinra realized the earlier reaction from Izaya. Blood. Blood that stained the walls and the smell of something metallic and bitter. He had forgotten that kind of thing long ago, but as he tried to process the events, he remembered his first encounter with it too.

It drives people over the edge when they see blood. Even more so when the blood that they see is their own.

Shizuo was the first victim before his mother. Yet, even as his father stabbed him, he managed to survive from the various experiences he had with violence. The thing he loathed so much had saved him, but unfortunately it couldn't be said so about the rest of his family. Then the figure of his father finally looming over his unsuspecting brother.

Shinra sighed in deeply into the fragrant aroma of his tea. There was, however, nothing comforting about it. Shizuo had always loved his brother dearly. They were siblings after all. They fought, they bickered, but in the end Kasuka had been someone who understood him. That kind of bond wasn't easily broken, and in the worst of times could cloud one's already wavering judgment.

That was probably the end for their father. From the various stabbing points Shinra witnessed during autopsy, he stopped the speculating of this death. He knew.

Then there was Izaya. Izaya who had wandered into his best friend's house, only stopping by like usual. Only to witness the last moments of his friend's parents and the bloody knife that shook uncontrollably in the blonde's hand. If he had not known Shizuo, he would have thought that he killed them and was about to kill his younger brother. If he was not Orihara Izaya, he would have ran, ran without asking the reason, away from this nightmare.

Instead, as if understanding the situation, he walked up to his friend and held him tightly. Droning on and on about calming down, asking him what happened, doing the same speculation that Shinra did. Shizuo would tremble and hold the knife to his throat. He would ask that Izaya take care of Kasuka when he was gone…

Izaya without thinking would grasp the blade of this knife, tightly, cutting into his hand. He would shout for the other to stop, and Shizuo would be momentarily horrified and confused screaming for Izaya to let go. The brunette would refuse, refuse to remove his hand until the other listened, and the blonde would nod. Once. Izaya winced because it was not an easy feat to remove metal that made its way into flesh, but he would not cry out. Shizuo would stare…stare at the crimson liquid, the merging glint of his own, his mothers, his fathers, and now his best friend's blood.

It was a gradient of torturous pain. The gradient of the blood red sun that made its mark on the item.

Between the two boys was a mirror. A mirror reflecting the tragedy in their eyes into a deep, glistening red. One pair of equally crimson eyes would lift themselves from this illusion, and look at the other's painful expression. He still wanted to join his parents. He longed to be put out of his misery, that will eventually seep into the depths of his heart and take him into a never ending void. This was real, the truth, and he would never be able to wake from it.

Not until death.

"Nothing happened."

His voice was soft and alluring.

"Nothing happened. This never happened. You didn't do it. You didn't do it."

It was rhythmic.

"You were sleeping. Your parents died without you. You didn't know."

Slowly.

"It's okay…it's okay…it's okay…"

Drifting into the quiet hypnosis of one's words.

* * *

In the dark tunnel, the echoing of the poundings stopped. Instead a wail of indescribable anguish filled the walls. Izaya slowly got up, every inch of his body shrieking in pain. But he made himself act as though he couldn't hear those cries, instead, making himself believe he was numbed. Reaching out, he held the man in his arms.

Shizuo couldn't remember him after that day.

Nor the day later, and so on.

Izaya had turned cruel. He played with humans, he altered their thoughts and manipulated them. Shizuo had turned furious at the world. Oftentimes gangs would come and fight him just because of his looks. They had drifted apart, steadily, and unable to watch this, Shinra reintroduced them.

At that point, it was already too late for them. Izaya's face, his presence sparked frustration in Shizuo. He confused that frustration as hate and anger, instantly disliking the cause of his headache. Izaya thought it was probably better that way. If they never had to see each other. Yet, somewhere in his mind, he was destroyed.

He had turned Shizuo's life into an endless dream. One in which he would someday wake up from and face the nightmare that was reality. Yet, Izaya couldn't lift that spell, nor did he wish to. Every time he imagined the eternal despair that rooted itself deep into the blonde's eyes, he could not bring himself to show him the truth. So instead, he shoved oil into the fire to punish himself. Shizuo's hate meant the world's end for him, but he supported it. Cultivated it, thrived in it. For if he could not feel the raining sadness each and every time, he would find himself with crushing anxiety.

If he could show Shizuo a world of dreams away from the impending nightmare, he could handle the hate forever. It was also, his selfish dream. He knew, because Shizuo would look back and try to stop him. The world he used to be in.

Being lulled back in the same hypnotic lullaby as before, Shizuo would remember Izaya. The old Izaya that was fleeting by memory, and soon to be tucked back into the abyss of his mind.

Why was it the one he loved the most he would not be able to remember?

"Nothing wrong…"

Had they loved?

"No one to hurt you…"

Had they been friends?

"Forget…forget…"

What happened to his parents?

"It's okay…it's okay…"

There was only darkness. The reality was melting around him, and the blade would glance at the deadly sky once more. Reflecting, reflecting back. Unable to tell which was the ground and which was the blade or even which one the sky was.

Tomorrow, they would go back to the routine again. Shinra sipped his tea and sighed.


End file.
